América Gonzalez is a hotel housekeeper on Vieques, an island off the coast of Puerto Rico, cleaning up after wealthy foreigners who don’t look her in the eye. Her alcoholic mother resents her; her married boyfriend, Correa, beats her; and their fourteen-year-old daughter thinks life would be better anywhere but with América. So when América is offered the chance to work as a live-in housekeeper and nanny for a family in Westchester, New York, she takes it as a sign to finally make the escape she's been longing for.
Yet, even as América revels in the comparative luxury of her new life—daring to care about a man other than Correa—she is faced with the disquieting realization that no matter what she does, she can never really escape her past.
Esmeralda Santiago (San Juan, Puerto Rico, 17 de mayo de 1948). En 1961 se mudó a Brooklyn cuando tenía 13 años. Tras estudiar en la Escuela de Artes de la Interpretación de Nueva York, donde se especializó en teatro y baile, ingresó en la Universidad de Harvard. Obtuvo después una Maestría de Letras en el Sarah Lawrence College y se doctoró en el Trinity University. Fundó junto a su marido la productora Cantomedia y empezó a escribir los textos de los programas educativos que producían, al tiempo que ...